BioWorld International Correspondent

MUNICH, Germany - Cellzome AG bucked the gloomy venture market and raised €30 million in its third round of financing.

The company, spun off from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory in Heidelberg in May 2000, aims to speed and streamline drug discovery through better understanding the role of cellular pathways in human diseases. It has research programs in inflammation, Alzheimer's disease, cancer, metabolic diseases and antifungals.

Invesco Private Capital, with headquarters in New York, led the investment round, which was joined by Biofrontier Partners, SG Asset Management and Yamanouchi Venture Capital. In addition to those new investors, current backers adding to the round were Atlas Ventures, Advent International, Index Ventures, Heidelberg Innovation, Schroder Ventures Life Sciences, Sofinnova Partners and Stelios Papadopoulos. The company previously raised €34 million in March 2001, in an investment round led by Index Ventures.

The fresh capital will be used to fund research and development and proof-of-concept studies.

"Our goal is to increase radically the rate at which drug targets and chemical leads can be identified, by integrating our expertise in proteomics and medicinal chemistry," said David Brown, CEO of Heidelberg-based Cellzome. He joined the company in September from Roche, of Basel, Switzerland, where he had been head of global discovery. Brown succeeded Cellzome's founder, Charles Cohen, who moved into the role of chairman.

Brown cited the company's approach as the reason for finding investment in a difficult market. Cellzome probes the human proteome with existing drugs and drug-like molecules, using its "drug pulldown" technology to identify new target-lead pairs on a large scale. The targets that the process identifies thus already have chemical ligands that can be used to validate the target and for optimization. Target and lead, Brown said, are identified in a single step.

"Earlier successful generations of drug discoverers usually started with a chemical lead," Brown said. "Often, nature's ligands were used to probe biological systems, and targets and leads emerged in parallel. Cellzome's approach is similar, but with the added power of exploiting our new knowledge of the human proteome."

By using the drug as a starting point to capture the target, Cellzome is able to couple the target and lead identification phases of drug discovery. The company also maps the molecular context of the target and interacting proteins. Cellzome believes the resulting annotated networks also enable accurate selection of alternative targets, or alternative leads in the chemical genomics space.

The company has completed two disease-focused research projects, fully mapping all proteins in the amyloid precursor protein pathway and in the TNF-alpha pathway. Complete maps of those pathways have helped identify novel components, and a number of new, tractable targets can enter drug discovery.

"Cellzome has tuned this pathway-mapping capability to the point where we can now economically map all disease pathways of interest to the pharma industry," Brown said. "The ability now to have multiple shots on goal in these key disease pathways gives a significant competitive advantage."

The company employs about 100 people in Heidelberg and London.